By Susan/Miranda
Don't know what the weather's like in your neck of the woods, but here in eastern Pennsylvania, we are definitely in the deepest, dirtiest Dog Days of summer. Each afternoon the temperature flirts with triple-digits, the sky's an unchanging swampy grey, and the humidity is more appropriate to the bottom of an aquarium than any human habitat.
By now the fresh white t-shirts bought in April are limp and stained with Popsicle juice, and bathing suits are pilled with those little weird fuzzy things. Cats and dogs lie pressed flat to the bathroom floor, children and spouses are whiny and disagreeable, and the pink cosmos by the front door are nodding thick with Japanese beetles, despite the pricey beetle trap hanging right nearby. Summer reading lists are belatedly rearing their ugly heads, and so (already!) is the nearby Halloween Adventure.
Let's not mince words, Dear Readers. In these parts, August stinks.
To make matters worse, I, like about half of the other Wenches, have Deadlines in early fall. Deadlines that once seemed reasonable and achievable back in the distant time when contracts were signed, deadlines that now loom like the Grim Reaper himself, like the darkest harbingers of editorial despair and futility, like the -- well, enough already. I've only got, oh, roughly a bazillion pages to write between now and the first of October.
Which is why, this week, I'm presenting only a final iconic portrait of Barbara, Countess of Castlemaine. I don't
know if I should be offering apologies to Sir Peter Lely, or Matt Groening, or both (and many thanks to the Cherries over at the Cherry Forum Book Discussion of Royal Harlot for putting this into my head.)
Just blame it on August.
So what about you? Are you weary of summer, too? Sick of too much air conditioning and overdone barbecue? Feeling more than a little toasted by heat and humidity? Or do you still have the same fond regard for the season in August that you did on Memorial Day?